scholarly journals Thomas Hobbes: Liberal illiberal

Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) has often been regarded as a very illiberal thinker —a defender of ‘despotism’ and an advocate of the principle that ‘might is right’. While those accusations are false, it is true that there are distinctly illiberal elements in his thinking. These include absolutism, authoritarianism, anti-constitutionalism and a hostility to democracy. Yet his political theory also contains some of the most important building-blocks of modern liberal thinking about the state and its citizens: the crucial role of consent; natural rights; egalitarianism; the idea of the state as a device to protect people against oppressors; the homogeneity of legal authority within the state; the concept of the state as a public realm; and the idea that the sovereign acts publicly—above all, through law. (These last three points are preconditions of a Rechtsstaat.) And whilst Hobbes denies that people are ruled by a constitution, his theory does acknowledge the need for rule through a constitution.

Author(s):  
Ruth Kinna

This book is designed to remove Peter Kropotkin from the framework of classical anarchism. By focusing attention on his theory of mutual aid, it argues that the classical framing distorts Kropotkin's political theory by associating it with a narrowly positivistic conception of science, a naively optimistic idea of human nature and a millenarian idea of revolution. Kropotkin's abiding concern with Russian revolutionary politics is the lens for this analysis. The argument is that his engagement with nihilism shaped his conception of science and that his expeditions in Siberia underpinned an approach to social analysis that was rooted in geography. Looking at Kropotkin's relationship with Elisée Reclus and Erico Malatesta and examining his critical appreciation of P-J. Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Max Stirner, the study shows how he understood anarchist traditions and reveals the special character of his anarchist communism. His idea of the state as a colonising process and his contention that exploitation and oppression operate in global contexts is a key feature of this. Kropotkin's views about the role of theory in revolutionary practice show how he developed this critique of the state and capitalism to advance an idea of political change that combined the building of non-state alternatives through direct action and wilful disobedience. Against critics who argue that Kropotkin betrayed these principles in 1914, the book suggests that this controversial decision was consistent with his anarchism and that it reflected his judgment about the prospects of anarchistic revolution in Russia.


Jurnal Akta ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 463
Author(s):  
Muslim Ansori ◽  
Akhmad Khisni

With the enactment of the Education System Act no 20 of 2003 (better known as the Sisdiknas Act), the State has determined that educational institutions should have a legal umbrella in the form of a legal entity, or better known as the Legal Entity Education. As a non-profit organization, the Foundation is the right legal entity that becomes a place for educational institutions, especially private schools. Therefore, of course, Notary has a very crucial role in making notary deed in the form of establishment and deed of change, such as example how in making the right basic budget and not multi interpresatasi for stake holders in the foundation. Therefore, the role of function and authority of the organ of the foundation must be clearly stated in the articles of association, so as not to cause a dispute in the future.KEYWORDS: Notaries, Foundation, Organ Foundation,


Kant Yearbook ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Mike L. Gregory

Abstract Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend has recently gained more sustained attention for its role in clarifying Kant’s published positions in political philosophy. However, too little attention has been given to the lecture’s relation to Gottfried Achenwall, whose book was the textbook for the course. In this paper, I will examine how Kant rejected and transforms Achenwall’s natural law system in the Feyerabend Lectures. Specifically, I will argue that Kant problematizes Achenwall’s foundational notion of a divine juridical state which opens up a normative gap between objective law (prohibitions, prescriptions and permissions) and subjective rights (moral capacities). In the absence of a divine sovereign, formal natural law is unable to justify subjective natural rights in the state of nature. In the Feyerabend Lectures, Kant, in order to close this gap, replaces the divine will with the “will of society”, making the state necessary for the possibility of rights.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-215
Author(s):  
Antonio Franceschet

The International Criminal Court (icc) faces a profound authority crisis. This article explores the underlying conditions and ethical implications of this crisis in light of Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) political theory. The icc’s authority crisis is twofold: First, having been constructed as a purely legal actor, the Court’s inevitable role in politics has undermined perceptions of its legitimacy. Second, having been constructed as a supranational substitute for domestic legal authority, the icc has been subverted by other, political branches of the state, such as the executive. These problems have been particularly salient in Africa where states have vociferously challenged the Court’s investigations and prosecutions. Kantian political ethics show that the icc’s authority crisis is an intractable moral problem that must be addressed collectively and coercively by sovereign states acting upon a larger, cosmopolitan duty to enforce universal rights.


1997 ◽  
Vol 69 (9) ◽  
pp. 122-142
Author(s):  
Zoran Lončar

The paper presents the fundamental factors of expropriation (term, concept, history, law reasons, object, subjects) and the role of administration in the procedure of expropriation. From the aspect of whole procedure the author concludes that the state administration has a crucial role. Because of that in the law schools, expropriation in the largest volume would enter the scope of administration law.


1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Simons

A sense of distance or exile is a recurrent theme of the literature in which the state of the political theory is either lamented or acclaimed. A review of these tales suggests that implicit definitions of the homeland of the sub-discipline as philosophical, practical or interpretive are inadequate, leading to mistaken diagnoses of the reasons for the ills or recovery of political philosophy. This paper argues that political theory has been exiled from its previous role or homeland of legitimation of political orders. Under contemporary conditions in the advanced liberal capitalist political order, in which a media-generated imagology of society as a communicative system fills the role of a legitimating discourse, political theory faces a legitimation crisis.


1990 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERT A. ROCKMAN

In political theory the state has been enjoying a conceptual rebirth even while some of its activities have been receding. The state, however, remains conceptually ambiguous and is thus molded into many different conceptual forms. Three of those forms are discussed in this article: the decision-making state, the production state, and the intermediary state. The first relates to the organization and architecture of decisional authority; the second to the public and distributive goods supplied by the state; and the third to the interconnections between state organization and the organizations of civil society. Although the state lacks unique definition as a concept, its value lies in bringing together the most important macro-level connections of the polity, the society, and the economy that cannot otherwise be adequately analyzed in isolation from one another. In particular, the state provides a focus for the study of statecraft within a given constellation of institutional and interest formations and public cultures. And yet statecraft itself cannot be detached from an analytic focus on the role of incentives, which must be effectively manipulated in order to preserve the fundamental functions of the state.


Napredak ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-56
Author(s):  
Milan Brdar

In this article author presents an apology of the state in relation to modern political theory and humanity scholars and persistent criticism of such an important institution. The first section of the article provides a reconstruction of the origins of the negative attitude toward the state in liberalism, Marxism and conservativism, which have resulted in ridiculous predictions regarding the disappearance of the nation state in the context of globalization. In the second part the author asserts that the state is the unavoidable medium of modern social synthesis and deals with the problem of the one-sidedness modern ideologies and their programs of social synthesis. The principles necessary to perform this task are divided amongst ideologies (freedom - liberalism, equality - Marxism, community - conservativism), and due to this historical fact, we have conflict between them instead of complementarity. This leads to the conclusion that we ought to get rid of devotion to one ideology in favor of reform of our way of thinking. The final section of the article provides a description of the phenomena present transitional societies and the leading political role of intellectuals. In the author's view this unhappy occurrence is due to inadequate education in the area of modern political theory, which due to its negative attitude toward the state reduces our political skill. The first step to avoiding this requires the abandonment of negative attitudes toward the state and the fostering of respect of the state as the protector of the "common good" and the guarantor of liberty, necessary for the improvement of people's lives, in keeping with Aristotle's statement.


Author(s):  
Paul Sagar

This chapter examines Adam Smith's political theory of opinion in relation to the contributions of David Hume and, to a lesser extent, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, regarding sociability and the state. More specifically, it explores how Smith's development of Hume's alternative theoretic framework of opinion led him to construct a theory of regime forms that was deeply historically inflected, even as he also ultimately admitted that philosophy is incapable of finally resolving the tensions and predicaments generated by purely secular politics. The chapter first considers Smith's notion of utility as the central factor in explaining human sociability before discussing his insight into the correct understanding of the role of utility in human psychology, which carried extensive implications for politics. It then analyzes Smith's rejection of Montesquieu's classification of monarchies and republics and his account of how opinion generated authority. It also describes Smith's views on sovereignty and the limits of philosophy.


Author(s):  
Karl Widerquist ◽  
Grant S. McCall

This chapter introduces the role of “the Hobbesian hypothesis” in social contract theory by discussing how Thomas Hobbes introduced it. It defines the version of “the Lockean proviso” relevant to social contract theory as the following moral standard: for a state to be justified virtually everyone must be better off under the state than they could reasonably expect to be in any stateless environment. The chapter defines the contractarian version of “the Hobbesian hypothesis” as the empirical claim that the Lockean proviso is fulfilled by the state: the state benefits everyone or at least everyone who prefers safety to a perilous environment devoid of security. The chapter argues that any plausible justification of existing states drawn from broadly Hobbesian or contractarian principles relies on this hypothesis as an empirical premise comparing the welfare of disadvantaged people in state society and people in stateless societies.


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